ANN ARBOR — May Mobility, the Ann Arbor-based startup that is developing self-driving shuttles for college campuses and urban areas, announced that two New York City-based venture firms, Millennium New Horizons and Cyrus Capital Partners, have joined its investor base, co-leading a $22 million Series A funding round.
Also participating are Santa Clara, Calif.-based LG Technology Ventures and San Francisco, Calif.-based Thayer Ventures, alongside return investors Mountain View, Calif.-based BMW i Ventures, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Maven Ventures, Los Altos, Calif.-based Toyota AI Ventures, and Mountain View, Calif.-based Y Combinator.
Company officials said the round will help May Mobility expand engineering and operations in order to meet growing demand.
“We — today — provide mobility services that are reliable and safe, on public roads, with a tech stack designed to operate now and ready to scale as the industry and customers are ready,” said Edwin Olson, CEO of May Mobility. “Our unique technology solves customers’ real-world transportation problems, and we are continuously collecting valuable technical data and market insights while generating revenue in the process. May Mobility is uniquely positioned as the only autonomous vehicle company that’s truly open for business.”
Currently, May Mobility focuses on the “last-mile” transportation market of short trips in urban cores. May estimates the size of that market at $28 billion a year. May’s commercial services currently navigate the streets of downtown Detroit, as well as Columbus, Ohio. These routes are in high-density areas, filling a critical need for customers and riders, but challenging for traditional autonomous vehicles. In the coming months, May Mobility will be launching public services in Grand Rapids, Mich. and Providence, R.I., with plans to announce additional commercial deployments in cities across the United States later in 2019.
“Millennium has spent the past few years researching the mobility market and May Mobility stands out to be the only company that has delivered a real-world here-and-now transportation solution in a technologically feasible and economically viable manner,” said Ray Cheng, partner at Millennium. “Today, May is servicing rides at a cost-per-mile unmatched by any others in the industry. We are excited to partner with May and help the company grow to become an integral part of the future of transportation.”
Added Benjamin Birnbaum, co-founder of Repower Group, a Cyrus Capital affiliate: “Simply put, we believe that the future of urban transportation is shared, electric, and autonomous. May Mobility has a uniquely talented team, a scalable operating model, and is already solving mission critical challenges for its customer base that meet this vision. Repower Group specializes in helping companies grow in asset intensive segments. We’re excited to be a partner to May as they navigate the next stage of their growth. We believe that May Mobility’s impact on accessibility, quality, and cost of urban transportation will be transformative for the way that people move around cities.”
And May Mobility COO Alisyn Malek said: “Communities throughout the U.S. are struggling to provide convenient and reliable transportation services, and our model is already being deployed to solve real parking, traffic, and land management issues for municipalities, developers, and business customers. This new round of funding will help us expand existing routes and allow us to serve new partners as we accelerate our growth this year.”
For more information about May Mobility’s products, technology, or career opportunities, visit https://maymobility.com/.